


Stand the Heat

by Taabe



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 15:32:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6085107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taabe/pseuds/Taabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Bitty makes whipped cream. And Jack stays in the kitchen.</p><p>Written with warm thanks to Ngozi Ukazu, who knows how to write love with depth. The story is hers; I'm just  a spectator.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stand the Heat

I’m standing at the sink, looking out the kitchen window and tasting sweetness and 60 proof vanilla. This flavor always takes me back. Maybe it’s the cool smoothness on the tongue. The pathway lights are on and the window is open. I can just see the tops of Shitty’s and Lardo’s heads over the back of the couch on the lawn. I’m thinking about how I got here, barefoot in cargo pants and a tank top, owning the world. 

Was it Virginia Woolf who talked about the total absorbtion of whipped cream? Almost the only thing I remember from high school English. Thinking about high school doesn’t flip my gut tonight. There’s a warm breeze on my arms, and I can smell the lilac bushes down the path. I can hear voices out the window. I can call out to them any time, and in a few minutes I’ll go out there and get them to try my new recipe for rhubarb crumble and see if leaving the rhubarb in the fridge in orange juice for two days because I forgot it before that final paper turns out to be a good thing. But not yet. The floor and the cupboard are cool against my feet, and I want to wash the dishes. Slowly. Tonight this place belongs to me.

And then I feel that invisible pressure in the shoulder blades. Someone’s here, someone I didn’t hear come in, and I turn.

“Jack, hey.”

I have’t seen him since he told us he made the call to Providence. He’s been in his room, out running, doing what he does when he has to take something in. I’ve learned to lay off the linzer tortes, but I’ve been keeping an eye out. He’s standing in the doorway looking across at me. He’s half-smiling. I probably have cream on my nose.

“What,” I say to stall him. “You never lick a beater before? You poor deprived boy.” 

I release the second beater from the mixer and hold it out to him. I’m leaning against the sink, feeling it cool under my arm, and he’s half in the hall with his face in shadow. I can see the tense muscle in his shoulder though. It must have been a long day. Talking lightly at him sometimes works.

“Tell me you’ve had real whipped cream before. I never did get why no one makes it anymore. It’s nothing like the stuff in cans, and it’s so easy.”

“Don’t spill it,” he says, with a shake in his voice, easing his shoulder around the door frame.

I brandish it at him, splattering cream across my hand and plonk onto the worn floor boards, and he catches his breath and comes and takes the stem of the beater. His fingers slide over mine.

He lifts it to his mouth. Closes his eyes as he tastes it. And then he holds it out to me. So I lick it too. We trade off, and he’s holding it close until I’m standing on tip-toe. I’ve got cream on my neck and down my collar bone. I make a grab, my hand laughably small over his, and bat the beater at his face. He holds it high out of my reach. He’s chirping me.

“Can’t stand the heat?”

“Says who?”

And I jump for it. I’ve trained for this — I can get air in a good cause. I get a fingerfull, and he has cream on his forehead now. I stick the landing, but I stumble into him anyway, and his hand comes around to steady me. He’s laughing with a catch in it and trying to run the beater down my cheek. I fend it off, wiping at my face, and he moves his sticky hand to stop me.

“You look good like that.”

I shrug lightly, lean back, tune up the Georgia drawl.

“Come back tomorrow and I’ll eat a peach.”

He still has his free hand on the small of my back. I reach over and turn on the hot water. We’re leaning together on the counter, and this time I’m not moving away. 

Outside the window, voices and footsteps come up the path arguing about the drama club play — _“Newton’s equation would have run out. Leibniz squared it, so it never comes to zero. Force Vive. Energy that keeps itself alive.”_ The wind gets up and turns the leaves topside in the maple tree. He blots his forehead with his wrist.

“I guess it does get hot in here.”

I take the beater to rinse. Hot water runs over my hands until I shut it off. I can feel the pulse in my throat.

“Hang around my kitchen more often. You might be surprised.”

“Your kitchen?” He brings the old taunt, light but husky.

“It just _is_ my kitchen. You want to lay title, you can start doing something around here once in a while.”

“Like what?”

I turn back to him, light on the balls of my feet, and I look him full in the face.

“Whatever you want.”

I wait for him to reach for a dish towel. Tell a joke. He’s standing so close I can feel him holding his breath. He looks out the window screen, past the tiny evanescent flecks of moths, and says to the night, “When I came in you were — you looked so — relaxed.”

The silence spools out. I feel as though I’m listening with my calves and my shoulders. He says as though it’s drawn out of him, “When I saw you tonight, standing there. Like the checking mornings. You kept coming back. No matter how scared you were. You came out to the guys in your _first semester._ And I’d watch you in your Beyoncé t-shirt —“ He drops his head against the cupboard. “God I envied you. And I didn’t know it.” 

“Are you saying —“

“I’m saying I’m sorry.” 

I start to turn, to feel for a hand towel, still close enough to sense the lift of his ribs when he breathes in, when my hip brushes his leg. Supportive is one thing, but he doesn’t need my example. His hands come up to my shoulders and hold me to face him.

“You know I told George, and now it’s becoming real. These last three days, all I could think about.” He brings his eyes back from the window. “Was missing you.”

There’s rawness in his voice, and he’s breathing like he’s winded. I put my hands on his forearms, lightly, and feel the all-over shiver in him. He drops his head, and his voice comes low in his chest.

“The roof fell in on me.”

Maybe it’s fallen clean off. Maybe that’s why the room suddenly has no walls and the spring air is moving on my skin. I’m holding him between my hands, lifting them to stroke.

“You know why I kept coming to the checking,” I say, my voice as bare as shucked corn. “You kept me on the team —“ he tenses, drawing in, and my hands tighten. Now I’m talking like a Georgia boy because I was born there.

“You could have kicked me off on the first week. You got up before dawn and made me me fight my demons every damn day. You’ve seen me crumpled like a rag. You’ve seen me cry. You’ve seen me shamed. You made me push through.”

I feel him go still, completely still, as though I’ve just knocked the breath out of him. He gathers me to him in silence, as though no one’s ever taken him seriously before, and I’m holding him, telling us both “It’s all right. It’s all right. I’m here.”

He says “I know. You never walk away.”

I feel his back under my hands, under the cotton shirt. I used to have to work for a fist-bump. I cup the back of his head. An impossible movement five minutes ago, and now it’s instinct. He’s shaking as though he’s just revved up from 0 to 60 in 10 seconds.

My hands move up in what I mean to be reassurance, my face in his neck, but he turns his head — and I turn mine.

A few salutes at the GSU’s spring Queer Bash have nothing to do with this. That was about synapses. Never anyone I knew. This is Belgian chocolate to that Swiss Miss. This talking by touch, this bone-deep gentleness cut with a longing I’ve never felt before because I’ve never let myself. I haven’t been held without self-consciousness since I was a small child. I haven’t been held so fully ever in my life.

All the times I’ve imagined this, I’ve never imagined this molding of bodies until I’m shaking, rocking against him. The world can turn over in a minute. I feel already naked.

He shifts, and I hear the breath in my throat at the milimeter of air between us when I say — “Hold me.”

He flips off the light. In the darkness the counter ripples like water under the glow from the pathway lamps. He moves to taste the cream on my neckline, and I feel as well as hear the vibration of his voice. “ _À jamais_.”

We’ve slid down until we’re on the floor, and he’s cross-legged and I’m on his lap, my bare feet curled around to touch the small of his back. I’m sliding his t-shirt up. He spans the skin at my waist with his hands. I lose any words I might have had, and I feel him smile and tremble.

“You’ll have to teach me my way around in here.”

When I can speak I say, breathless, “You’ll have to teach me French. I only know a few words.”

“I didn’t know you knew any.”

“Just the good ones. _Fondant._ ” Melting. “ _Entrecote._ ” I brush his bare ribs, and he draws a quick breath.

“ _Soufflé_ eh?” He blows warm air gently on my neck, and I feel myself flushing. 

“ _Brulée._ ” Burning. 

“ _En Flambé._ ” 

**Author's Note:**

> 60 proof vanilla is real.
> 
> The play Bitty overhears a reference to is "Emelie la Marquise du Chatelet Defends Her Life Tonight." 
> 
> "À jamais" means always, to the end of time.


End file.
